j J k:: .. t \ , x ø ... 22 '\ , 'i kdltW ^ \ \.. \ 'Y\ L- ei \ . c.. , \ t < :: r .' .... .:'..";, :.. =::. ..... , :'.... - \ ..' .;.' . \ ^ ø "': "= " > .' , ,< .m ........ ^ )Qo" ... "" , ' \/ í .. / ^ > , ,I I .., -<1/ t , -, \ ! ' '""""'-<-. , , _.,-- - ;- ,. M ....M. ! ' >*"L.- .-- . "{ "I'm not bored. It's just that my money belt is killing me." cence was going full blast-a jukebox playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue In D Minor, two espresso machines hiss- ing, a white-apron ed, blond-bearded dishwasher playing chess with a custom- er, an old Chaplin film flickering on a movie screen in a corner, abstract paint- ings hanging on the walls, a collection of Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling, a grand piano (quiet) to one side, the customers brooding, reading, or buzzing with discussions, polemIcs, and harangues on faith and life. It drew us. We cornered Tom Ziegler, the owner, a clean-cut man of thirty- one, whose hair was slicked back on his head with water, and whose T shirt showed faintly under a conventional white one, open at the collar. "We're sometimes called the square coffeehouse, but we don't mind because k ' " Z ' I we now we re not square, leg er told us "It's simply that when you come here you have to behave. '^1 e don't permit the weekend tourist Beat- niks-a lot of them come down from the Bronx sporting day-old beards-or any would-be Beatniks who read about press-created-Image Beatniks and try to be like them, to work out their psychic difficulties here. Look around. You'll see plenty of Beatniks, but they're nothing like the exhibitionists exploited in stories in the News. Our Beatniks are the real, true, old-fashioned, won- . . derful bohemians There's been some harassment of coffeehouses that didn't meet fire-law standards, despite the fact that hundreds of eating places in town wIth the same conditions weren't both- ered. But I maintain that the market for coffeehouses is unlimited. This is just the beginning of the boom. It's go- ing on all over. In London two years ago there were two hundred coffee- houses; now there are twice the n um- ber. In 1956, when my wife and I started the Figaro, there were a few coffeehouses around, and I wondered whether the Village could stand another coffee place. Last month, there were more than two dozen new ones SInce we'd started, and I've stopped counting. The coffeehouse fills a real need; peo- ple have to congregate. There are two possibilities for a young girl, say , who comes to New York and doesn't know anybody-'7.W.C.A. dances and cof- feehouses. She doesn't want to make the bar scene. For a young man, a cof- feehouse is a place for him to sit down and talk to people without being jostled by drunk . One of the things we enjoy is Europeans who find their way here. Americans they've met in Europe tell them the best place for a stranger to go is to the Figaro. Here they have a place they feel they belong in, where they can e:h.change Ideas, talk, carryon a "ocial life. In away, it follows the high-school AvaVST , 19 O '? corner drugstore for a lot of kids. Where did I go when I was eight- een? I went up to Hell's Kitchen and hung out on street corners and eventually got into trou- ble. Here we keep an eye on the teen-agers. They play chess or checkers, or just talk, and we get them to drink milk. And we don't let them hang around too long. Some of them I ration to three VISItS a night. Look around. See them? Nice kids. " Mr. Ziegler drew a deep breath and did some looking around himself. "Coffeehouses have been under attack down through history," he said, turning back to us. "I recently came across an article that re- ported there was hostil- ity to coffeehouses at Oxford in the seven- teenth century. They were criticized as being gathering places of students and teachers, who conse- quently lost respect for each other and frittered away their study time. I don't agree. I'm sure there were people then who benefited tremendously from cof- feehouse life, as there are now." We asked Mr. Ziegler for his coffee- house background. "I didn't know a thing about it, and neither did my wife, when we started," he replied. "It was probably a good thing that we didn't have any restaurant ex- perience, because to run a coffeehouse as a restaurant is impossible. V\T e got into the business to make some money to pay my way at N.")T.U.; I started college when I was twenty-five. I've lived jn the Village all my life-except for two years in Hell's Kitchen-and I went to school here. My father is a painter. One thing I know-in the Village, you can find somebody who knows about anything. o rigin all V , the Figaro was in a former barbershop across the street. That's how It got named. I bought it from a friend for three thousand dollars that I bor- rowed. He'd had it a couple of months and was tired of it, or so he told me. We put another two thousand dollars into it across the street, and then we took this corner, the SIte of two former stores- drygoods and instrument repairs I prac- tically built the place with my own brok- en hands-put up the walls with a fnend ^>